ATTACK BY MOB

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1935, Page 11

ATTACK BY MOB

TRIALS OF SALVATION ARMY. MEMORIES OF BRITISH CHIEF. Memories of the Eastbourne disturbances of the ’eighties, when the Salvation Army was the object of organised hooliganism, were recalled by Commissioner Charles Rich, who has been appointed to take charge of 1600 corps and forty-three slum posts in the British Isles, following his six years’ work in Sweden. He told a reporter that fantastic prices were paid for windows overlooking the Eastbourne front, so that people from London might spend the week-end watching the Salvation Army bands being attacked, their instruments smashed, and the players of both sexes beaten and given a ducking. Commissioner Rich recalled how the price of bonnets captured from the lassies rose after they had adopted the plan of wearing more and longer hatpins. “I believe that is a great hunger for religion among young people nowadays. They are the finest of any generation,” he declared. The Commissioner, who has had forty-three years’ service with the Salvation Army, paid a striking tribute to the part played by the royal family of Sweden in aiding, the movement.